Sunday, March 29, 2015

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "L" is for "Larceny")

Next
Sunday is Easter.Berowne, in a
desperate effort to be topical and up to date, has dredged up the following:

Victor: I’ve told you before, I don’t like doing
this.

Mike: I know, but this is something special.I really need your help.An expert like you can tell me if this thing
is worth real money.If so, well,
there’s a big chunk of dough in it for you.

Victor: All right, let me have a look at it.

Mike:There. It's a special Easter egg. What do you think? Go ahead, take your time, no
hurry. Have a good, deep look at it.

Victor: I don’t need to look it over at all.I know what it is.

Mike:You
do?You mean it’s famous?

Victor: You could say that.How did you get this?

Mike: There are two young men who sort of work for
me.They – er – acquired it.

Victor: Pure larceny, right? And the two young men are punks who steal
stuff for you, right?

Mike: Now, wait a minute.How they got it or how it got here isn’t the
question.All I want to know from you
is, what’s it worth?

Victor: What did you pay for it?

Mike: Well, I figured I could always sell it for
fifty dollars – a hundred if I’m lucky.So I gave them thirty-five bucks for it.

Victor: Thirty-five bucks.Unbelievable…

Mike: It’s worth more?A lot more?

Victor: To you it’s worth nothing.You wasted your thirty-five bucks.

Mike: What are you trying to pull?It’s gotta be worth something.

Victor: Let me give you a bit of history.Way back in the year 1918, the entire royal
family of imperial Russia, the Romanoffs, were assassinated by the rabid Bolshevik secret
police.You’ve heard about this?

Mike: Sort of.

Victor: Then maybe you also heard that one of the
daughters, Anastasia, managed to live through the assassination attempt and
escaped.

She later lived in Europe for years under the name
of Anna Anderson.The word got around in
recent years that she had moved to the States and spent the rest of her life
here.Nobody could verify this; she
wanted to avoid all publicity.

Mike: And this thing belonged to her?

Victor: You guessed it.She had this Easter egg with her at all times,
the only thing she had been able to save.

Mike: And you’re trying to tell me it isn’t worth
anything?

Victor: It isn’t worth anything to you.That girl, just a teenager at the time of the assassination attempt, was
a royal princess: the Grand Duchess Anastasia.If you could put this up for auction you'd set the place ablaze; I imagine the bidding would begin
at around twenty million.

Mike: Holy smoke!

Victor: But if you tried to sell it you’d have cops
and FBI and Interpol and God knows who else after you.And they’d dig deep into your operation and learn a lot
you’d just as soon they didn’t know.

Mike: You wouldn’t consider buying it, would you?

Victor: I would not.There’s never going to be anything but headaches with this.Way I see it, the person who owns it – or
owned it before it was stolen from him – was keeping it very quiet, and
probably for good reason.

Mike: So what am I supposed to do?

Victor: I’ll tell you what you should do.Pay the two hoodlums who stole this to carefully
take it back to the home they stole it from.Leave it on the doorstep with a note saying “Easter egg.Happy Easter!”Then press the doorbell and run like hell.

The tradition of giving Fabergé's eggs started in the 19th century when the Czar of Russia gave his wife such a beautiful piece of jewelry. This went on until 1917 I guess, with a break of some years in the beginning of the 20th century. Interesting piece of history! Thank you !Thank you for visiting too.Wil, ABCW

most interesting story, but did Anastasia survive and if she did why wasn't she given protection from one of the European royal households...It is difficult to know what to believe about her,Good story!Happy Easter,Best wishes,Di,ABCW team.

Roger said it first, good egg! I love the movie with Bergman and Brynner. Hope you have a peaceful Easter, Berowne.

I used to live in Manhattan and, back in the day, the Forbes building kept Malcolm Forbes' collection of Faberge eggs on display... in little windows, behind bulletproof glass! It was a treat to walk by and be that close to history, but I often wondered whether the eggs should be back in Russia in a museum. Peace, Amy